Ready Boost?

[cmpm]

Does ReadyBoost actually help?

I've looked it up, and found stats saying it helps if your memory is at 1gb.
2gb and up they say it doesn't help much at all.

Anyway, I have a single core amd sempron1.8 laptop with 1gb of ram.
And a 4gb usb stick, which I dedicated to readyboost. Running Windows 7.

It seems to help with speed and less delays on opening programs.
The default sounds were even delayed a bit, which was kind of funny.
But better with readyboost.

This is not my primary computer so I'm not intending to buy more ram for it.
Just wondering what you think and your experience with readyboost performance.

Thanks.

[Curt]

Edited: sorry I was confusing the names;
this post is about eboostr, the "ReadyBoost for XP", not the same thing.
---

I have a license for the "cheap" standard version but decided it was too simple - it didn't help me. I think one will need the more expensive pro version before ReadyBoost eboostr makes sense, if ever. (... deleted)

[Darwin]

I ran it under XP Pro Sp-3 with 2GB of RAM. I bought an early license for the Pro version and received two years of upgrade protection. During the first 8 months, I rand v.1, v.2. and started beta testing v.3. With the right USB thumb drive (ie one rated for ReadyBoost), I saw a small benefit in terms of overall system stability. Once I moved to a main system running 4GB of RAM I stopped using it. It's definitely no substitute a RAM upgrade...

[cmpm]

ReadyBoost is built into Windows 7. Inserting a usb stick will trigger the option to use the stick for Ready Boost if the stick can be used for it, which mine can. Perhaps there are some usb sticks specifically designed for Ready Boost, I don't know.

This SanDisk 4gb stick works with W7's built in Ready Boost option.
Is there another type of usb type booster for W7?
I don't know.

as a side note-
Intel Turbo Memory driver will not work with this laptop.

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/SearchResult.aspx?lang=eng&keyword=%22intel+turbo+memory%22

Most report not much gain from it anyway.
I don't have the proper options in the bios for it to install.
It's an amd computer and not intel AHCI capable.

http://downloadmirror.intel.com/18011/eng/readme.txt

Anyway, at this point Ready Boost on this stick is helping.
It's set to write caching, for better performance.
I don't know of any other settings or tweaks to speed it up.

It's doing ok for an amd 1.8 with ati graphics though.
Just slower then my desktop, by a good margin.
The desktop specs are much higher though.

[Darwin]

ReadyBoost is built into Windows 7. Inserting a usb stick will trigger the option to use the stick for Ready Boost if the stick can be used for it, which mine can.

Yes, and in Vista as well. When I moved from 2GB to 4GB of RAM, I also upgraded (by virtue of buying a new notebook) to Vista 64 bit. At this point, I did try ReadyBoost, but couldn't see any benefit to it. I never did try eboostr under Vista/Windows 7 - hardly seemed worth it.

Perhaps there are some usb sticks specifically designed for Ready Boost, I don't know.

I don't know if there are sticks specifically designed for ReadyBoost, but there are definitely sticks labelled "ReadyBoost Capable" or something along those lines. I have two such Sandisk drives. The rating has to do with the transfer speeds that the USB drive are capable of maintaining. I have a couple of older Kingston drives and ReadyBoost rejects them as being too slow. eBoostr will allow you to use these slower drives. It will also allow you to use whatever number of caches, of any size, that you like, whereas ReadyBoost limits you to a single cache, not to exceed 4GB. This is one (or is that 2?!) reason to use eBoostr under Vista/7.

[cmpm]

Does ebooster disable windows built in Superfetch?
Also the limits of Vista are removed in W7 (which is really a Vista overhaul) from what I read.
Of course anything can be said on the net.

[Darwin]

Does ebooster disable windows built in Superfetch?
Also the limits of Vista are removed in W7 (which is really a Vista overhaul) from what I read.
Of course anything can be said on the net.

Can't answer either of those questions as I've not used eBoostr under either Vista or Windows 7 and have never even tried ReadyBoost under Windows 7 (did try it briefly under Vista, though).

Note: eBoostr 4 is in beta and promises:

...full Windows 7 compatibility and an exciting new option of using hidden system memory for caching.

eBoostr 3 is touted as enabling:

Vista’s ReadyBoost and SuperFetch benefits on your Windows XP PCs;

[Darwin]

To quote one of my favourite of Hirudin's phrases, for "shits and giggles" I installed the beta of version 4 and am giving it a whirl under Windows 7 64 bit. I've installed it, rebooted, and created two 4GB caches. I've moved both VueMinder Pro and Firefox 3.6 beta to the caches and will see if Firefox is better behaved. I'll report back in a few days with the results. I remain skeptical about how useful eBoostr will be under 7, but we'll see...

PS Have now enabled the System Memory cache as well, so I'm now using the default recommended settings. Note: the developers claim that hidden system memory (presumably the difference between 4GB and what is used by Windows 32-bit systems) can be used as well. I can't test this because my only 4GB machine is running Windows 7 64-bit...

[Darwin]

Don't really have to wait a week... I uninstalled the beta last night (because of a perceived conflict with another piece of software) and rebooted. This morning I've replicated the "stressed" working environment that I was tooling around with last night and can't "feel" any difference. Bottom line for my system is that it is very responsive with either eBoostr installed or not...

FWIW, I'm going to give it another go as I discovered today that the conflict that I thought I had identified last night was a bug in the beta version of VIPRE's AV/AS that I am running. I don't really expect the outcome to be much different, though.

Sorry to have taken this thread off-topic (I think). I originally posted thinking that cmpm was specifically asking about eBoostr, but reading through it - particularly his OP - it appears that I was wrong.

[f0dder]

Windows ReadyBoost: does give a bit better performance on really low-memory systems, if the USB drive is fast enough. I've always thought this feature was a bit misguided... RAM is pretty cheap now and much, much, much faster (you'll want to avoid swapping, whether it goes to disk or USB) - the hours spent designing ReadyBoost could have been spent better elsewhere.

As for eBoostr, I've always been pretty skeptic of it - they don't really document what they're doing, how they're doing it, nor why they're doing it. It probably has more valuable than those good-for-nothing "memory optimizers", but still: meh.

[cmpm]

Windows ReadyBoost: does give a bit better performance on really low-memory systems, if the USB drive is fast enough.

Yes, thanks f0dder, that's what I've been hearing from all sources on the net.
Right now the cost of more memory is too high for me. Money needed for other things.
Although that could change soon. But I'm not sure if this old laptop will last anyway.
It's an old Acer 3500, which works fine, but if something goes wrong, I'm upgrading to a better laptop since this one is single core (probably slows it more then the memory) when the money is right.

[Darwin]

f0dder - my experience now and a year ago when I last ran it are pretty much in accord with your views. I *think* eBoostr *might* be useful on XP or Win2k systems with USB 2.0 ports and fast USB drives in the same way that Ready Boost is useful on low powered Vista and Windows 7 machines. If I had USB 2.0 ports on my Win 2k machine (512MB RAM) I'd test this hypothesis, but sadly, I do not... Of course, this supposes that Win2k would benefit from more than 512MB RAM - I've never had a problem with Win2k on this configuration, but then I'm not running any memory intensive software, other than Office 2003.

At any rate, to reinforce my comment from my last post: eBoostr doesn't do anything that I can see on a system with "adequate" amounts of RAM installed (to paraphrase those old Bentley commercials  ).